Endangered Watchdogs

Summary

The 2025 municipal elections marked a turning point in Georgia’s democratic trajectory. As major opposition parties boycotted the contest following the alleged fraud in the 2024 parliamentary elections, the vote took place without credible domestic or international election observation—a first since the early 1990s. The country’s leading watchdog organizations refused to observe the vote, arguing that the political and legal environment no longer allowed for meaningful observation or genuinely competitive elections. Major international observer organizations did not deploy missions either, which left the field to pro-government and fake observer groups. As a result, there was no independent verification of the campaign environment, election-day procedures, or the official results announced by the Central Election Commission.

The absence of credible election observation is not an isolated development but rather the result of a broader process of democratic backsliding and shrinking civic space in Georgia. Over the past two years, the ruling Georgian Dream party has introduced legislative and administrative measures that significantly restrict the activities of civil society organizations (CSOs), independent media, and the political opposition. These include the Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, amendments restricting access to foreign grants, and changes to election-observation rules that severely limit observers’ ability to detect fraud on election day. Combined with pressure on independent organizations, the freezing of the bank accounts of CSOs, and growing repression against protesters and opposition leaders, these developments have fundamentally altered the operating environment for citizen election observation.

These developments also reflect a changing broader international context. Since 2025, democracy assistance and election-observation efforts globally have been weakened by declining international funding and growing hostility toward independent scrutiny. In particular, the termination of much US democracy assistance has had a direct impact on Georgian CSOs, which have historically relied on external support. At the same time, authoritarian and hybrid regimes increasingly use government-aligned and fake observer groups to legitimize flawed electoral processes and to discredit independent monitoring efforts.

Against this backdrop, this paper examines three political scenarios for Georgia in the coming years: parliamentary elections taking place as scheduled in 2028, early elections triggered by political crisis, and early elections combined with a referendum on the country’s Euro-Atlantic integration. All three would have major consequences for Georgia’s future, and in all three the prospects for credible election observation are highly uncertain. Traditional election-day observation models, including parallel vote tabulation, may no longer be feasible under the highly restrictive conditions. Instead, domestic organizations may need to adopt alternative and decentralized approaches, including citizen-based monitoring, secure digital reporting tools, and remote documentation methods.

Preserving the independent domestic election-observation infrastructure is critically important for Georgia in this difficult environment. Domestic organizations will need to focus on maintaining a degree of institutional survival, protecting their core expertise, strengthening their credibility with the public, and developing alternative funding models. At the same time, international donors should not give up, but instead adapt their support strategies to the country’s restrictive environment and continue defending the legitimacy of credible election observation as an essential democratic safeguard.

Tamara Sartania is a ReThink.CEE Fellow 2025 of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

The views expressed herein are those solely of the author(s). GMF as an institution does not take positions.